Photos from a week’s worth of walks from back in January. This first is from the Sunday, the day after the glorious Saturday which featured in my previous post. As you can see, the snow was gone and so too the blue skies and sunshine.
The lights of Grange from the Cove.
Monday must have been another drear day, because I had a reasonably substantial stroll after work, but only took photos from The Cove when it was almost dark.
On the Tuesday, I didn’t start teaching until after 11 and so took the opportunity to have a wander around Jenny Brown’s Point.
The path down from Fleagarth Wood
The weather was a complete contrast from the day before. I think it was even quite mild.
Farleton Fell in the distance.Quicksand Pool.
The tide was well in.
Smelting works chimney.Mergansers. I think.Jack Scout coast. Coniston Fells on the horizon.
The drab, dingy weather returned on Wednesday and Thursday.
Wednesday – Elmaslack Lane.
Around the village, people had put their Christmas lights up early and now left them up late.
Thursday – The Green, another late afternoon walk.
Using MapMyWalk usually persuades me to take at least one photo on each walk, so that I can attach it the file for that walk. I quite like having a visual record even of the gloomy days.
Friday brought a hard frost in the morning.
Frosty windscreen.
And the longest walk of the week in the afternoon (only about six and a half miles).
Wigeon (male).
I actually took lots of bird photos, particularly of a Little Egret which was close in shore, but the light was a bit weird…
Lovely, but weird.
Rounding Arnside Point into the Kent I was surprised to see that Hampsfell and the other hills across the river had a covering of snow.
And then, when I climbed to Heathwaite, I discovered that we had some too…
In fact, on the Knott, there was quite a bit…
It was getting late, and I had the top to myself. I was disproportionately chuffed to have found some snow to crunch, and had a good wander around the highest part of the Knott.
Obligatory winter photo of flooded Lambert’s Meadow.
The weekend brought more cloud and damp.
On the Sunday, I walked our now habitual Sunday circuit around Jenny Brown’s Point not once but twice, in the morning with our neighbour BB…
And in the afternoon, with TBH.
The tide well in at Quicksand Pool again.
Over the eight days represented here, I walked around thirty miles. Hardly earth-shattering, but not bad for a week when I was working and when daylight was at a premium. Working form home is a completely useless way to teach, but, from a completely selfish point of view, I was all in favour.
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So, pop-picker’s, the post’s title is from a song which, I’m pretty sure, I’ve shared here before.
The weather’s variable – so are you But I can’t do a thing – about the weather
Here’s another couplet:
You dislike the climate but you like the place I hope you learn to live with what you choose
Anybody know it? It’s from an album called ‘Magic, Murder and The Weather’ if that helps?
A few photos from the week leading up to Christmas. Since I had MapMyWalk working again, I can say that I got out almost every day over the Christmas break, often more than once, almost exclusively for local wanders.
One day, TBH and went up Arnside Knott. The weather was really odd: looking south it was hazy, with the Bowland skyline obscured by low cloud and a bit of low-lying mist. The effect, I thought, was to make Warton Crag look bigger than it usually does.
On the other hand, looking north…
…although many of the hills were obscured by cloud, there was a good deal more clarity and a healthy helping of blue sky.
Primroses often appear on a grassy bank along Cove Road in early February, quite a bit earlier than they are found elsewhere. But this winter, they started to flower before Christmas. I’m always intrigued to see what I can find in flower at the turn of the year, since it’s often a much greater variety of plants than you might expect.
Looking at my photos, I found Stinking Hellebore, which is not that surprising, but also garden roses, Welsh Poppies, Geraniums and Ox-eye Daisies, none of which you’d really expect in late December.
Photos from three consecutive weekend’s walks around Jenny Brown’s.
This first set are a bit odd, because there’s plenty of blue sky over the Bay, but it’s grey inland and the light is very flat.
Must have been a Sunday morning walk, which is generally when TBH and I chose to have a wander together.
We finished across the sands, which we didn’t often do, and they weren’t quite as firm and dry as we’d anticipated, but firm enough, fortunately – no quicksand drama to report! Hard to tell in the photos, but the Coniston Fells had a covering of snow.
This photo…
…on the other hand, was clearly from a late afternoon walk; the warm light is a giveaway.
I remember this walk well. Unusually, I was on my own, I don’t remember why.
I finished across the sands again and, even close in shore, being out there on a winter afternoon as the light faded and the lights around The Bay came on, felt quite wild and special.
Finally, one photo from another rainy walk around the point. On our regular walks we’d watched Quicksand Pool undercut the high far bank of the channel. We’d often hear the clump and splash of a section falling away. It was interesting to see, each week, how the bank and the channel had changed.
Back on the sands – you can see the grey ‘skin’ which starts to develop on the sand after several hot days with low tides.
There were people paddling in the channel. Since then B and his friends have started visiting this part of the Bay on hot days for a swim – the water is barely deep enough I gather, but they are still very glad of it.
In the distance – quite hard to pick out – a group spanning at least three generations had a number of long fishing poles propped up on tripods. B and his mates have also tried fishing here. They caught nothing. Fishing with good friends and catching nothing sounds like the best kind of fishing to me, but I never really caught the fishing bug. We’ve since heard that there are Sea Bass to be had down near Jenny Brown’s at high tide. B assures me that he’s not after Sea Bass, he’s holding out for shark apparently!
Morecambe Bay may be the most beautiful bay in Britain. Thanks to the tides, it drains more or less completely twice a day. You can be standing on sand that a short while before was under thirty feet of water and vice versa. It’s the vice versa that you have to worry about because the tide comes back in very quickly, not in a line like an advancing army, but in fingerlets and channels that can easily surround you and catch you by surprise. People sometimes go for walks, then belatedly notice that they are on a giant, but steadily shrinking sandbar.
Bill Bryson again. He doesn’t really do lukewarm – he either loves it or hates it. Most beautiful? That’s a bit of a stretch. Sandwood Bay springs to mind as a contender, but I am very fond of Morecambe Bay obviously.
I’ve finished ‘The Road to Little Dribbling’ and enjoyed as I always seem to with his books.
The channel had connected with the Kent and was now much further out from the shore. Above you can see the now dry channel where it formerly ran.
After a couple of very thirsty walks, I’ve taken to carrying a rucksack on my longer local walks, so I can carry a drink. It’s also convenient to stow my camera away there too, which is all very well, until I want to capture a moment quickly. So these Brimstone butterflies…
…which were disporting themselves on some Dame’s-violet had to be photographed with my phone. Not entirely satisfactory, but you can see the strong contrast between the buttery yellow male and the much paler female.
When I was wondering about whether or not the House Sparrows in our hedge would nest or not, I was completely forgetting the early morning racket we hear in our bedroom every summer. I’m not quite sure how I managed to forget that cacophony. Even though our house is pretty modern, in each corner of the roof there’s a tiny hole up under the eaves. At least two of them were occupied this year. This male…
…is just pausing during a prolonged concerto of chirruping.
I’ve continued to make bread every couple of days, but not to take photographs. I made an exception for this one, because I hadn’t made a loaf like this before, a farl apparently…
Turned out rather well and has become a bit of a favourite.
TBH admiring the Ox-eye daisies on Cove Road.
Another wander on the sands. This is the day after the previous walk.
More sun-seekers. Our neighbour told me that many had driven up from Liverpool.
Red Valerian outside the Silverdale Hotel.
More amorous butterflies, once again photographed using my phone, this time Small Tortoiseshells.
Since Whit week, whenever the sun has shone, we’ve witnessed the strange phenomena of people sun-bathing on the sands. I know I’m an advocate of our bay, but it isn’t a beach in a conventional sense, since it is more mud than sand. It was actually much busier than this photo suggests, but one thing the bay has going for it is that there is lots of room to spread out. We have also seen people way out, paddling in the sea, much further out than I would ever venture without a guide. Don’t they remember the horrific accident with the cockle-pickers?
My wander down to the beach was a precursor to another trip to gait Barrows.
I sat on the path and took no end of photos of this tiny butterfly. I suspect that it’s a Northern Brown Argus, but I couldn’t swear to it.
Equally, I think that this is an Azure Damselfly, but wouldn’t put up a fight if you contradicted me.
This, however, is a Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. I think I’ve seen more of them this year than in previous years put together, although that’s not saying a great deal, since my previous sightings have been few and far between.
I’ve put the music at the top of the post for once: I think it deserves pride of place.
So, as advertised, finally, here it is. Back in March, I signed up for a brilliant project which combined singing and hill-walking. There were just two rehearsals, the second of which I couldn’t make because I was in the Tower Captain’s car on the way up the M74 for our weekend at Bridge of Orchy.
Actually, there was a third, very last minute, practice, on the morning of the event, in the Morecambe lifeboat station…
…for which purpose, the lifeboat people had very kindly moved their hovercraft out…
Then we wandered down to the end of the stone jetty for the first performance…
It was wet and windy and absolutely perishing. Sounded good, though, to my untutored ears.
And, through the wind and the rain, our destination, Clougha Pike, briefly appeared above the buildings along Morecambe’s seafront…
“Breakers, rollers, pebbles, sand, Half at sea and half on land,”
Admittedly, it is a bit hard to pick out in the photo, but it is there.
I lived for a while in a third floor flat on the promenade and the views of the Bay in one direction and across Lancaster to Clougha in the other were superb.
Anyway, our aim was to climb Clougha starting from the sea front and then get down safely before it got dark, so there was no time to hang around. We passed the Midland…
And joined the network of cycle tracks which connect Morecambe and Lancaster.
We crossed the Lune by Carlisle Bridge…
And then set-off on a long loop along the quay and then a footpath to Freeman’s Wood, where we sang again.
The graffiti is part of the lyrics from the song.
Freeman’s Pools.
The route had been cunningly devised to bring us all the way through both Morecambe and Lancaster on either footpaths or very quiet bits of road.
An arrangement has been made with the Fox and Goose pub, on the outskirts of town, so that we could use their beer garden for a quick break and use their loos. We’d been walking for a few hours without really stopping and I was more than ready for a sit down, a drink and a sandwich.
The next part of the walk was inevitably confined to the roads, there being an unfortunate lack of paths linking Lancaster to the hills above it. At least we could see Clougha more clearly now and the weather was improving too.
We stopped again at the Rigg Lane car park, where the ascent would begin in earnest, and where we were offered an impromptu stretching routine…
Some people had opted to miss some parts of the walk, and joined us again at the car park.
“The brook is from a picture book”
An unnamed (on the OS map) tributary of The River Conder, which itself drains into the Lune near Glasson Dock; which makes this walk one of my Lune Catchment walks.
Clougha Pike.
Morecambe Bay.
“Rocks like booby traps.”
The going was pretty rough here and the pace predictably slowed. I’d been feeling a bit bushed, but picked up now that we were off the roads.
Approaching the top.
Most of the people I talked to seemed to belong to at least one of the, I discovered, many choirs in the Lancaster area. I used to sing with the Carnforth Community choir for a while, and enjoyed it enormously, but the meetings changed to an evening which I can’t really make. One positive outcome for me of joining this project, aside from the fact that I had a great time, is that I was told about a choir which sounds very welcoming and which meets in Lancaster on a night which is much more convenient. Well – used to meet in Lancaster and will, at some point presumably, be meeting again.
“Rain will slick the stones, Wind will wind around your bones.”
We sang one last time on the top and then it was just a matter of wending our way back to the car park and then the logistics, thankfully well organised by Dan, of getting everybody back to their cars and/or homes.
We were none too soon heading down – the sun was getting low in the sky.
Mapmywalk gave a little over 16 miles all told, from car to car. Dan told us that from the end of the stone jetty to the top of Clougha was 13 miles, which sounds about right. You could shorten it a fair bit by taking a more direct line through Lancaster, which would be pleasant enough, although that would also necessitate a fair bit more up and down I think.
Have you ever climbed a hill with a choir? Or tried a sea to summit ascent?
Morecambe Bay, with lots of horseshoe vetch rather imperfectly captured in the foreground.
When I was at secondary school, in my mid-teens, I spent my lunchtimes playing cards, or football; listening to, or later, a sixth-form privilege, playing records in the music club, which is the only time I remember ever being in the school’s one and only lecture theatre; bunking off into town to borrow books or records from the library, or occasionally buying records; even more infrequently going to the pub with friends for a sneaky beer (way under-age and in uniform, how times have changed); but sometimes, quite frequently to be honest, I would slope off to the school’s library for a quiet half-hour. I’ve always been a bookworm. Back then, I liked to read New Scientist each week, and sometimes leaf through the English edition of Pravda, because it tickled me that the school bought it, and then I had an assortment of favourite books, which I would revisit. There was a dictionary of quotations of which I was very fond; I also remember reading about Russell’s paradox and the paradoxes of Zeno, which could have been in a maths text, but I suspect I more likely discovered them in an encyclopaedia; and there was a coffee-table style book of the photographs of Ansel Adams.
Burnet Rose.
All of which is my long-winded way of introducing the f/64 group and their dedication to pin-sharp photographs, with a huge depth of field, achieved using a very small aperture.
I’m going to guess that these are pollen beetles of some description, the smaller ones anyway.
I was already a photographer, of sorts, by then. My Grandad gave me an old Agfa camera of his own which he’d replaced. It was 35mm, not SLR, but it was necessary, for each photo, to set the aperture and exposure, for which purpose he also gave me a clunky light-meter which was almost as big as the camera. I don’t think I took any very startling photos, limited as I was by the cost of processing the films, but it did give me a great grounding in the mechanics of operating a camera.
Bloody crane’s-bill, I think.
When I finally did get an SLR camera, thanks to my parents largesse, it incorporated a light meter and was semi-automatic. And since the switch over to digital cameras, the couple that I’ve owned seem to have become increasingly autonomous and do everything but choose the subject which is to be photographed, and that’s surely only a matter of time.
Bell heather, I think.
I do switch off the full automatic mode when I’m using the telephoto for nature shots of small or distant things.
Wood ant. Small, but not all that small compared to other British ant species.
And I’ve recently remembered that the camera has a ‘landscape’ setting and started using that again, but I need to remind myself how that’s set up. The camera generally defaults to f2.8 because the wide aperture lets plenty of light in which means the huge zoom works better than on many equivalent cameras, but that also decreases the depth of field, which is not ideal for landscape pictures
I’ve also remembered that what captivated me in Ansel Adams black and white photographs, all those years ago, was the sharp detail in the foreground, the distant mountains and even in the clouds. I’ve been trying to remember to include some foreground in the pictures, maybe by kneeling or lying down or by finding something striking to frame in the foreground.
This picture, for example, of Grange and Hampsfell, could really do with a bit more interest in the foreground. To be fair, the reason I took it was to show the channel, which was no longer right under the cliffs and which seems to be connected to the River Kent, which is how the OS map shows it.
These two, with a bit thrift for colour, are what I was thinking of, although how successful they are I’m not sure.
It kept me entertained, thinking about it, anyway.
Oystercatchers.
The f/64 photographers were based in California and had all of the advantages that offers in terms of scenery and particularly in terms of light. Even in the good spell of weather we’ve had, you can’t always guarantee decent light in the North-Wet of England.
The pictures, long-suffering readers will almost certainly recognise, were taken on a walk around the coast to Arnside, which was followed with a return over the Knott, creature of habit that I am.
New Barns and Arnside Knott.
Close to Arnside, where there’s a small public garden abutting the estuary, there was a real hullabaloo in the tall pines growing in the garden. The noise was emanating from a conspiracy of ravens, some of which were in the trees and some of which were circling above, clearly agitated. This single individual was holding itself aloof from the fuss, coolly going about its business.
It eventually flew up on to the wall and then proceeded to hop and prance about there, looking, I thought, very pleased with itself, like a mischievous and slightly disreputable uncle enjoying a fag outside, whilst the family party audibly descends into a squabble within.
Train crossing the Kent viaduct.
Arnside.
From the end of the promenade, I climbed up through the old Ashmeadow estate where there a small area of allotments. There something very comforting about a well tended allotment, I always think, not that I’d ever have the patience to keep one neat and tidy myself.
From there I was up onto Redhill Pasture, where, any day now, I should be able to assist with the wildflower monitoring project again; we’ve just had the go ahead from our local National Trust officer.
Redhill Pasture.
Lakeland Fells from Redhill Pasture.
Kent Estuary from Redhill Pasture.
Kent Estuary from Redhill Pasture, again.
Forest of Bowland and Arnside Tower from the south side of the top.
Morecambe Bay from the south side of the top.
Goldfinch – there were several together on this telephone line.
Through a bit of sleight of hand, I can finish with a sunset, although, in truth, these photographs are from the evening before the rest of the photos. I had a late walk on the sands and then found a sneaky way up on to Know Hill.
It wasn’t a great sunset, but I like the different perspective the slight gain of height gives and the view of the Coniston Fells beyond the Bay.
I shall have to try this again sometime.
Today’s tunes all can only really be things I can remember playing when it was my turn on the decks during the rather subdued disco with nowhere to dance, in the lecture theatre, which I think was a weekly affair. To set the scene, most of my contemporaries would play tunes from Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ album with an admixture of The Thompson Twins and, bizarrely, Thomas Dolby. As we progressed through the sixth-form I guess you could add The Smiths and U2 to that list.
There was a very vocal and fairly large minority of headbangers, or grebs, as we called them, who felt that music began and ended with Status Quo, Iron Maiden, Whitesnake and the like.
And then there was me and my mate A.S. It’s not that I didn’t like what my other friends played; mostly I did, but they all played the same things. The sixth-form committee had a pretty vast and reasonably varied collection of 45s, why not dip into it?
‘Babylon’s Burning’ The Ruts
‘Echo Beach’ Martha and the Muffins
‘Nut Rock’ Bumble Bee and the Stingers
‘Saturday Night at the Movies’ The Drifters
Also, always the Tommy Opposite, I knew full well that some of my choices really got up peoples noses. We did sixth-form parties too, and rented ourselves out, mostly for eighteenth birthday parties. We were very cheap, but you might find as many as 10 thirsty DJs arriving with the PA and the lights. Happy times.
There have been many covers of ‘Watermelon Man’, not least by Herbie Hancock himself. This one, by Mongo Santamaria, is the one with which I’m most familiar:
This is Herbie’s very different re-recording from the funky ‘Head Hunters’ album:
And finally, one of two Ska versions I know, by the Baba Brooks Orchestra.
Aquilegia or columbine. It’s in our garden here – but it is a British wildflower.
Song thrush.
The beech circle.
Middlebarrow Quarry – or The Lost World. ‘Every time I see it, I expect to see dinosaurs’, B tells me. I know what he means.
Middlebarrow aerial shelduck display team.
“Keep the formation tight as we come in to land.”
“Quick breather, squadron, and we’re off again.”
Of course, having seen a peregrine once, I now keep going back to peer over the lip into the vast quarry at Middlebarrow expecting lightening to strike twice. It hasn’t. I do keep seeing the close formation aerial skills of the shelducks though. Lord knows why they feel compelled to circuit the quarry so obsessively.
This small plaque is on a house near home. I’m sure I’ve posted a picture of it before. But now I’ve learned that it’s a fire insurance sign – showing which insurance company the house was registered with. It seems more like something you might expect to see in a more urban location, but maybe this is an antique which has been added since the signs were rendered obsolete by the inception of a national fire service? The house is very close to our small fire station, which is manned by retained fire fighters, so they should be okay if the worst happens.
The Bay from The Cove.
Ransoms flowering in the small copse above the Cove.
Orchids on the Lots.
Green-winged orchid.
Early purple orchid.
Water avens.
Bugle.
Orange-tip butterfly on cuckoo-flower.
A bedraggled peacock butterfly.
Gooseberry flowers. I think.
Lambert’s meadow.
The skies above Eaves Wood.
It annoys me, more than it should, that I can never remember the names given to the various types of clouds. All sorts of stupid trivia is securely lodged in my brain, but even though I’ve read a couple of books on the subject, clouds just don’t seem to want to stick. I thought that if I tried to label the clouds in my photos, maybe I would start to remember a few at least. The fluffy white ones above Eaves Wood here are cumulus, right? Although, maybe some stratocumulus behind.
And I assume these wispy ones are cirrus.
And this is maybe cirrocumulus.
But then….? Altocumulus and cirrus?
Hmmm. More effort required, I think.
Oak tree in full summer garb.
Full-throated robin.
Bit obvious I know. But good.
And, completely unrelated, as far as I know…
…the opening track from one of my favourite albums, which I was introduced to by THO, who often comments here, and which I shall always associate with a superb holiday which was split, quixotically, between the French Alps and the Brittany coast.
We imagine that as soon as we are thrown out of our customary ruts all is over, but it is only then that the new and the good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.
This is Pierre, in ‘War and Piece’ talking about his incarceration following the sack of Moscow. Seemed apposite somehow.
Arnside Knott from near Know Point. I’d walked across the sands from Park Point – something I’d been thinking of doing for a few days beforehand.
Female chaffinch.
Roe Deer Buck in Eaves Wood – one of a pair I encountered.
Late sun on Silverdale and the Bowland hills.
A man of no convictions, no habits, no traditions, no name…emerges – by what seems the strangest freak of chance – from among all the seething parties…is borne forward to a prominent position. The incompetence of his colleagues, the weakness and inanity of his rivals, the frankness of his falsehoods and his brilliant and self-confident mediocrity raise him…his childish insolence and conceit secure him …glory. He more than once finds himself on the brink of disaster and each time is saved in some unexpected manner.
He has no plan of any kind; he is afraid of everything; but the parties hold out their hands to him and insist on his participation.
He alone, his insane self-adulation, his insolence in crime and frankness in lying – he alone can justify what has to be done.
He is needed for the place that awaits him and so, almost apart from his own volition and in spite of his indecision, his lack of plan and all the blunders he makes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power, and the conspiracy is crowned with success.
Do you have a clear picture? Can you guess who the passage describes? Yes – you have it – it’s Napoleon. In Tolstoy’s words. I’ve edited out all of the specific references to times and places which would give the game away. I can’t help thinking that this might fit quite a few leaders past and present. There’s a great deal more of this in ‘War and Peace’; I think it’s fair to say that Tolstoy did not hold Napoleon in high regard.
